With nearly every home in the world now possessing a computer, who can be 100% sure they are exempt from online criminal activity? As a home owner you can physically install home alarms which will alert you that someone is attempting to gain access to your home, driveway alarms which will alert you that someone is approaching your property, CCTV and door chains these are all designed to deter and prevent your home from becoming a target for thieves.

The number of people now using social networking sites such as Twitter, Facebook and Bebo has increased to well over two billion people worldwide, and, with some encouraging people to install applications such as games, fun surveys and chat platforms this has now become the perfect vector for cyber-criminals to gain entry to information within your computer. So as you sit in your home chatting to your mates on any number of social networking sites, cyber criminals are busy hacking into your personal information. However its not just in chat and game platforms, Social sites such as Twitter which encourage the use of shortened URLs with services such as tinyurl.com and bit.ly which again makes it easier to mask the true identity of the URL that you are asked to click.

Many of these cyber criminals will hope to take advantage of the amount of younger people that are accessing social networking sites, hoping that inexperience will cause them to access infected sites. Once your computer has been compromised by malicious software (malware), which may include spyware, viruses or Trojan Horses, all of these will infect your computer causing vast damage and will send your personal information back to its creator.

Remember if a website looks suspicious or you are not sure of it keep away from it.

Unbelievable, a new site has sprung up recently called PleaseRobMe.com, where it claims to reveal the location of empty homes based on what people post online. The full article from the BBC can be found here : source.